When it cleared, the doors began opening and the passengers stepped down. A drummer with two sample cases, a rancher Gideon vaguely recognized from the north valley a family of homesteaders with the specific stunned look of people who had expected something different. And then her. She was the last one off, which should have been his first clue. She stood at the top of the car steps for just a moment before descending.
And in that moment, she did something he noticed and couldn't quite explain. She looked up the platform in one direction, then the other. A quick scan that wasn't the ordinary curiosity of arriving somewhere new. It was checking, the way a person checks when they're not sure who might be waiting. Then she came down the steps and he got his first real look at Viven Blackidge.
She was taller than he'd expected, dressed in a dark wool traveling coat that had probably been expensive several seasons ago and was now showing wear at the cuffs and hem. Her hair was dark and pinned up beneath a hat that was slightly a skew, as though she'd adjusted it in a hurry. She carried a small leather bag in one hand and held the rail with the other, and when she reached the platform, she stopped and straightened her coat with a precise, controlled movement that told him she was the kind of woman who used small physical corrections to manage things she couldn't otherwise control. She was, by any honest accounting, striking. That was not what he'd asked for and not what he'd expected, and it irritated him.
He walked toward her because there was no one else on this platform it could possibly be, and because standing and staring was not something he was willing to do. "Miss Blackidge," he said. "Not a question. " She turned and for just a half second, fast enough that he almost missed it, something moved across her face. "Relief, maybe? " or the specific exhaustion of a person who has been holding their breath for a very long time and has finally provisionally let it out. Mr.
Ashccraftoft. Her voice was steady, a little lower than he'd expected. She put out her hand and he shook it, which was not what most women did. Her grip was firm. I apologize for the delay.
I believe there was some trouble with the track near. The delay doesn't matter, he said. I have a wagon. We should get moving before the weather turns. He saw her absorb the absence of any welcome in that, and to her credit, she didn't flinch from it.
She nodded. Of course, I'll need to see to my trunk. " He had assumed reasonably, he thought, that the trunk would be one of the standard travel chests that went in the luggage car, something two men could manage. He followed the station porter toward the freight car, and what he found there stopped him. The thing was massive. It was constructed of dark wood banded with iron at every edge and corner with iron hasps and hinges and a lock that looked like it had been designed to survive something.
It sat in the luggage car like a small piece of architecture. And when the porter tried to shift it to test the weight, the man actually swore. That's going to want four men, the porter said, looking at Gideon with an expression that asked a question. Gideon looked at the trunk. Then he looked at Viven, who was standing slightly apart with her leather bag in both hands now and her face entirely composed.